Youthful rebellion
A graduate in theater from the National Institute of the Arts, Dai has been involved in everything from stage plays to advertisements, television, and movies. In addition to acting, he has written scripts, directed, and even done post-production editing, and has done a very creditable job in every role he's taken on. And what of his personal life?
Dai was born in 1966 in Chenggong Township, Taitung County. His father was in charge of student discipline at a local middle school, and he was very stern with his children at home. Once when three-year-old Dai got mixed up and wore his flip-flops on the wrong feet, his father beat him severely and locked him outside the house. Dai cried himself hoarse, but his father paid no attention, and finally a neighbor couldn't bear it anymore and took the boy back to her home.
Dai's father forbade his children from playing games or doing extracurricular reading, and often ordered them to sweep up neighborhood streets and repair the mortar in the walls of their home. As a result, Dai had calloused hands while still young. But Dai's father was not without his tender side. He liked to fish and go to the movies, and often took his sons along to the theater.
Back in those days, mainlanders working as civil servants were frequently transferred from one location to another, and so as a second grader in elementary school Dai moved with his father to Kaohsiung. The family would move again four more times over the years. The strict discipline and frequent moves left Dai feeling rootless. For him, movie theaters were the safest and most familiar place. There he could completely relax, and through the movies he could learn about the world. "I used to spend all my money on the movies. There wasn't a single listing in the paper that I didn't go to see."
During junior high school his family lived right between a bookstore on the left and a rental shop on the right offering novels and comics, so he was able to sneak out for forbidden reading every day. By his second year of junior high he was big and strong enough to stand up to his father, and ran away from home with his brother to stay at a classmate's home. He has been estranged from his father ever since.
Now in his 40s, Dai comments philosophically about his father. War had forced him from Gansu in northwest China to India, where he stayed for a few years before proceeding by himself to Taiwan. Without a single relative here, upon graduation from National Taiwan Normal University he volunteered for a hardship posting to Taitung County, where he was put in charge of student discipline at Xingang Junior High School. Dai is able to understand how the rigors of war molded his father's draconian character, but the two nevertheless remain estranged.
No Puedo Vivir Sin Ti tells the tale of a father who, after repeated frustration in his attempts to get a household registration for his daughter, is driven to a desperate act of protest on a pedestrian overpass in downtown Taipei.